Thursday, February 16, 2023
In bed at 9, awake at 3, up at 3:19, and let Lilly out. Snow day ahead, depth a question mark, Weather Service predicting 6 to 10 inches, highest near the lake. Winds gusting 35 to 40 mph, near blizzard conditions in the afternoon and early evening. The wind is NNE now at 16 mph, expected to be 6 to 24 mph with gusts near 40. The current wind chill is 18, expected to range between 17 and 29℉, Sunrise will be at 6:48, 3 hours from now, and sunset at 5:24, 10+35.
Insight Every now and then I am blessed with the knowledge that I am living in Heaven, that this is it. that this is as good as it gets and that this is heavenly. I silently shout Hallelujah! and am grateful. Sometimes I reach for my iPhone and take a photo of Geri on the sofa watching tv or knitting something for someone or studying something on her iPad with Lilly stretched out next to her or lying on the floor between us. I take the photo because I know I am in Heaven and I suppose I can capture the moment in pixels as if I could rekindle the momentary insight simply by looking at the photo. I can't of course - pains, worries, or other distractions get in the way - but I am thankful for these moments when they come. I had one this morning while making a pot of half-caf, half-decaf coffee, anticipating the coming snowstorm, and grateful for the gift that my dear wife and life partner is, and for my dog.
Me and my abortion pills I have for many years taken 3 misoprostol pills every day. Misoprostol is an abortifacient. It is also used to prevent stomach ulcers from developing during treatment with aspirin or an NSAID. I take this drug for an "off-label" use, i.e., to prevent a recurrence of Hunner's ulcers in my bladder. About 15 years ago and for some time I was beset by those ulcers in the lining of my bladder. The ulcers were constantly bathed in the urine my body produced. The pain I experienced from these lesions was so severe that not a day went by when I did not contemplate suicide and how I could do it and make it look like an accidental death. I rued the fact that protective barriers were emplaced before bridge abutments on the freeways, foreclosing one available 'way out.' On a trip through Glacier National Park with my daughter, I found myself thinking that driving off the Going-to-the-Sun Road would probably work though there was always a risk - not of death but of survival. Eventually after a number of chemical infusions and 3 or 4 surgeries involving general anesthetics and cauterizations, AND after taking misoprostol to prevent the recurrence of the ulcers, I was cured. My bladder lining was scarred and less flexible than it had been, but the excruciating pain was gone and the suicidal ideation with it. Within the last year or so, misoprostol became unavailable for some reason. My VA pharmacists speculated that perhaps the manufacturers had simply stopped making it because the profit margin was too small. In any event, I was much more than a little concerned until the drug became available again. Now there is a movement afoot to ban the drug or to at least prohibit it's being provided by mail (as mine is) because it can be used as an abortifacient by pregnant women. 20 Republican attorneys general earlier this month sent letters to Walgreens and CVS warning them against making the abortion medications available by mail. The drugstore chains had said they planned to seek approval to dispense the abortion medications that way after the Biden administration dropped the requirement that they be dispensed in person, and only at medical offices. If Republican 'right to life' zealots get their way, it may soon be the case that manufacturers of my ulcer medication will find it economically not worthwhile to produce misoprostol when there is so much money to be made by producing more profitable drugs, like Viagra and Cialis and Botox. In that case, I will simply have to hope that my ulcers don't recur and make me contemplate once again driving off mountain roads next to steep cliffs. All lives are equal, but some are more equal than others.
LTMW I see good neighbor John out for his first walk of the morning before the snow arrives. I also see 10 or 11 goldfinches on my tall niger feeder enjoying breakfast. I filled the niger feeder and the sunflower seed & millet feeders around 7 to ensure that daily visitors have a food supply during the storm. I saw a video on FB this morning of a red-bellied woodpecker calmly perched on a human hand filled with seeds and nuts, carefully choosing his preferred munchies. It reminded me of the chickadee(s) feeding off Geri's hand in the woods outside of Rhinelander many years ago during a camping trip with Tom and Micaela and reminded me of my desire someday to place a lawn chair near the feeders. to sit in with my outstretched hand full of seeds, trying my luck. Will our woodpeckers and chickadees be as trusting?
Haley sounds her dog whistles as she makes a play for the MAGA base Excerpts from Jennifer Rubin's op-ed in the WaPo this morning: (1) "Haley’s appeal to the MAGA crowd was also evident in a campaign ad released on Tuesday. It begins with Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, describing her hometown in South Carolina. “The railroad tracks divided the town by race,” she says. The railroad did it? Or was it the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws and the resistance to integration by Whites? As is typical among Republicans these days, she blurs over the real roots of American division to avoid reminding Whites of the original sin of slavery." (2) "In her speech on Wednesday, she echoed the GOP’s nasty war on “wokeism” — an all-purpose slur against efforts to advance inclusion and racial equality. On President Biden and Vice President Harris’s watch, she said, “a self-loathing has swept our country. It’s in the classroom, the boardroom and the backrooms of government.” . . . She added, “Every day, we’re told America is flawed, rotten and full of hate. Joe and Kamala even say America is racist.” (3) "Just like her potential competitors, Haley is channeling the base’s fear of losing White power. Those defending American pluralistic democracy and the promise to form “a more perfect union” should not be confused about the opposition they face."
There is something especially deeply offensive about Nikki Haley using racist dog-whistles to appeal to the Republican-White Grievance-MAGA base voters. Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa to immigrant Indian Punjabi Sikh parents at Bamberg County Hospital in Bamberg, South Carolina. Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, and her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, emigrated to the United States from Amritsar District, Punjab, India. Haley's parents moved to Canada after her father received a scholarship offer from the University of British Columbia. When her father received his PhD in 1969, he moved his family to South Carolina to be a professor at Voorhees College, a historically black institution. Haley and her family have benefitted from the U.S.'s move away from its earlier racist immigration policies favoring White immigrants and excluding immigrants from Trump's 'shithole countries like India. Now she puts herself into the "Great Replacement Theory" crowd whipped into a frenzy by the frenzied Tucker Carlson. She is light-skinned, doe-eyed, and conventionally attractive. She can and does pass for "White." And we know now, if we didn't before, that she enhances her pseudo-Whiteness with shameless race-baiting. Shamelessness seems to have become a sine qua non political requirement for today's Republican office-seekers.
CREDO: “...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.” ― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
"I write for months and months, stuff I have to toss but . . . I don't know what I can do until I have found out the hard way what I can't do." Ditto.
Starting 2 new projects on this Snow Day. (1) another Vietnamese girl on a chair, and (2) Fabiola portrait.
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